"The idea of 'gamers' as a minority group analogous to people of color, etc. is both absurd and offensive, but there's another way to see it -- They are creating what games scholar Celia Pearce called a 'fictive ethnicity'," writes sociologist and CUNY PhD candidate Cross, citing previous academic studies of relatively-benign groups that migrated among MMOs together.

User A_Man_in_Black editorializes on the role anonymous board culture has played in the "gamer backlash" — consensus in those communities tends to be both organic and decentralized, individuality and attention-seeking is harshly censured, and he suggests some of those behavioral rules have informed and continue to drive the hostile treatment of women in their spaces.

"Chan culture considers personal reputation meaningless but collective identity sacrosanct," he posits. "Don't you DARE suggest there anything wrong with anonymity or gaming! But if some chick's reputation is ruined, oh well, who cares."